ELOS Addicted ' FAAO: Cleaning and how to prepare the aquarium for New Layout

By FAAO,

Today I dismounted my layout of my 60L Aquarium and before I remove the hardscape and all the soil, I picked up all the shrimps and fishes. Then I took off the rocks and wood, and later the soil.

Some people are complaining about the quality of the soil that they are using because after several months of keeping their aquariums, the soil turns in to mud. I'm using ELOS soils since several years and I never had that problem. I don't know if people are too much complicated and cannot distinguish mud from wet soil, but in case of ELOS Soils, I never saw it turn in to mud... If we see the picture below it seems very compacted because it is very wet, and the grain of this soil is very small, around 1~2mm.

To be sure that is not a kind of mud, I've used a sheet of paper and it is visible the individual grains of the soil... so, no mud, just very wet!

I have used my son shovel to play around on the beach to remove the soil and I must say that is very useful and pratical! With that, it was possible to separate the normal soil from rich soil (ELOS Bottom mineral), of course that in one moment they were mixed, but I will use it later as rich bottom and all the normal soil to cover it ;-)

In this picture you can see the soil on the hose and in front glass and it is not mud for sure.

General view of all mess that I did on that moment...

After remove all the soil and very carefully to avoid any kind of scratches on glass, it is time to fill the aquarium with water. This will help to "unglue" and clean all the soil that was on the glass. Now just need to do the opposite situation, with the hose, remove all the water and the soil that was on the glass and it is now on the bottom of the tank. Do it 1, 2, 3 times until is clean!

It is new again and prepared to receive the new layout! Quite easy ;-)


New pictures very soon!